After my year in Salzburg, I spent another month traveling, mostly in eastern Europe. I wanted to see where so many of my students in my first year teaching had been from. Unfortunately, along with the rest of the pictures from this year, these pictures are reduced to those that had been put on Facebook at the time.
I feel as if I may have already written about Rijeka, but since I can't remember, I'll put it in again before moving on to summer. I found a cheap flight over the Easter holidays to Croatia. It ended up being something along the lines of 50 Euro round trip. Rijeka is interesting - it's an industrial port town trying to welcome tourists. The beaches were all industry, but I found my favorite spot up in Trsat, a fortress dating back to the Ottoman Empire. It holds a museum and cafe. I spent most of my day times there, drinking amazing coffee and watching a gorgeous view. 
I flew to Dubrovnik, Croatia and spent a few days there. It was a beautiful place to relax. I had a nice hotel on the Adriatic Sea. There was a nice beach area with an area to swim, and it was a good walk into town. The water there is so clear, you can't see how deep it is.
I learned enough Bosnian/Croatian (AKA Serbo-Croatian) to ask if the other speaks German or English. (Goverit li ti engleski ili njemaći? Probably not the best spelling anymore...) In Dubrovnik, the answer was usually German, especially in restaurants.
From Dubrovnik, I took a bus to Mostar, Bosnia. There was a border stop in between, but it wasn't too complicated. I do remember them looking at some of the bags, but I don't remember them being bothered by mine. There was a huge Catholic tourist attraction on the way, but I don't remember where exactly it was. Something about a siting of the Virgin Mary.
The hotel I stayed in for Sarajevo was a couple miles from the center of town. I took a tram in the first day. The tram was originally German. I remember noting a year, but I can't remember it. Something like the 60s. It was old and rickety, but it did the job. I walked around a park and heard a woman speaking/practicing German with her children. She smiled as we came closer to each other and asked me something in Bosnian. (I was only able to tell it was a question due to inflection, I didn't understand a word.) I replied in German that I was sorry, I couldn't speak Bosnian, but I could speak German. We talked for quite some time and she invited me up to her house for coffee. I went along and we continued talking for hours, along with her husband. They had been in Germany during the war. They talked a lot about politics, immigration/emigration, and religion - specifically, the differences in the different ways Muslim countries treat religious traditions and how people treat women. I wish I could remember their names. I would love to reconnect with them. Sadly, I only have one picture left of Sarajevo - one of a cemetery in the center of town, near the market. I took a day trip up to Vareš, one of the towns one of the students had been from, before moving on to Kakanj.
Kakanj is a small town. I enjoyed speaking with the hotel receptionist. We spoke over coffee. She taught me how to make Bosnian coffee, and explained to me how so many younger Bosnians can speak decent English while the others couldn't. TV shows were largely from other countries, especially America. I got to meet her family. It was a very pleasant visit and it made me love the Bosnian culture even more. Instead of dubbing the shows, they had subtitles. So the kids who great up with these shows have heard native English all their lives. From Kakanj I took the train to Banja Luka.
What I hadn't realized was that Banja Luka was sort of a Serbian area within Bosnia. Instead of mosques, there were Orthodox Catholic churches. Instead of written language that I could sound out and more or less get the gist of, I saw cyrillic. I got off the train and immediately felt a difference in culture. The taxi driver who took me to the hotel lectured me that he didn't speak Bosnian, he spoke Serbian. I knew there were some very important differences in the languages, but I just hadn't realized the political and religious cultural differences within Bosnia. All I can remember of this stop was a less-than-inviting attitude towards strangers, that is was hot and I had no air flow in the hotel, and the TV didn't work when I wanted it to. I don't even have pictures left of the churches, which were quite pretty at least.
Bihać was my final stop in Bosnia. The plan had been to continue by train to Split, Croatia, but on my way, I was told by another passenger that the train does not go to Split from there. It was strange because I had checked the trains online. When I got settled, I went to the train station and found a schedule that had a route to Split on it. The station was more or less abandoned, though. I couldn't find anyone to ask. I wandered around, looking at all the other signs in the station and found a small one on a bulletin that was a current schedule, very few routes. I looked back up to see the the date on the bigger schedule - 1991-1992. Pre-war. My hotel was away from the center of town right next to a gorgeous river. I enjoyed this stop. I can't remember if I could walk to town or if I had to take transportation, but I remember going to town a few times. There were many bullet holes in the buildings. I remember that vividly, even though the pictures are gone.
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